I see companies struggling with linkbuilding all the time. Huge law firms and e-commerce sites paying bottom-of-the-barrel “SEOs” to create Squidoo lenses and blast social bookmarking links once or twice a month. Real estate companies pumping out poorly-spun articles by the hundreds. I’m talking about unfathomably awful content; the type of stuff that makes a conversation between Snooki and Deena seem insightful. (Okay, I’m from Jersey – everybody relax.)
These companies are hopeless. They don’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell at beating their competitors in the SERPs. And it’s not because they hired some SEO firm that thinks “niche” is an author and “Xenu” is a warrior princess, or that they don’t have enough money to throw at paid links. It’s because they’re not playing the right game. They’re not even in the right stadium.
These companies want something for nothing. They want to “build” links without offering any value in return. They don’t understand that the key to SEO success is content. Real content. Real, delicious, juicy, informative, entertaining, valuable, high-quality content. The worst part? Most of them know it, and they’re too lazy or skeptical or intimidated or just plain stupid to take action. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes looking into SEO has heard the “content is king” spiel, but so few choose to actually give it a try.
Well, here’s how to do it. Here’s an easy-to-implement, completely scalable, white hat, top shelf strategy that will work for any company, whether you’re a Fortune 500 consulting firm or a six-employee startup.
- Have every employee in your company write two blog posts a month*. Now, when I say everybody in your company, I mean everybody that makes sense. Your maintenance workers shouldn’t be taking time out of their day to write blog posts about unclogging toilets at XYZ Industries. But if you have a pharmaceutical litigation firm, your lawyers and paralegals should be writing two blog posts a month about Accutane lawsuits. If you have a dog walking company, your dog walkers should be writing two blog posts a month about the best dog parks in your area. If you have a shore-themed reality TV show, your stars should be writing two blog posts a month about casual sex and the best clubs in Seaside.
- Publish the first blog post from each employee on your company blog. Tweet/Facebook/Google+ about it, submit it to any relevant social bookmarking websites, and stay responsive to comments and social media mentions.
- Publish the second blog post from each employee as a guest blog post on an authoritative blog within your industry. Tweet/Facebook/Google+ about it, submit it to any relevant social bookmarking websites, and stay responsive to comments and social media mentions.
- That’s it! No directories. No Squidoo. No blog commenting. No Angie, and certainly no Paul. Just publishing good, relevant content on a regular basis and getting it in front of the people that care.
* This might not go over well with your employees. My suggestion? Incentivize. Give out prizes every month to whoever’s posts get the most action on Facebook and Twitter. Turn it into a friendly competition. You’ll be forking over a few hundred dollars a month for top-notch linkbuilding services and boosting employee morale at the same time. Well worth it.
If you follow this strategy for six months, you will find that three incredible things start to happen:
- Your organic search traffic will increase considerably, provided you targeted keywords that are getting searched in both the content you published and the links you build in your guest blog posts. You will rapidly develop the kind of link profile that would make any professional SEO salivate – and without having paid a dime to consultants like me.
- Your referral traffic will start to rise. You’ve been publishing tons of great content to big blogs in your industry with thousands of Twitter followers, Facebook fans, RSS subscribers, and daily visitors. You’ll get a slice of this traffic, even if you’re not completely shameless in your guest post – and that’s a gift that will keep on giving down the road as your guest post starts to rank well on its own.
- Opportunities will start to magically fall your way. Well, magically might be a stretch. You’ve been guest blog posting regularly on all of your industry’s most authoritative blogs for months – people are going to start to know your name, and the next time they need a speaker at their conference, or they’re looking for someone to partner with for a new event, or they need a sponsor for their philanthropic project, you’re going to start getting phone calls. All of these opportunities can help you grow your business, be seen as a trusted and authoritative figure in your own right, and yes – attract more links.
And that, is the last linkbuilding strategy your business will ever need. If every company followed this strategy, people like me would be out of work – quickly.
